Obamacare: good medicine or bad policy?

It is true that some companies may stop covering their employees. But not as many as you think since most companies offer health coverage to their employees as a benefit to attract and hold on to their best people. That will not change for most companies. For those that do drop coverage their employees can sign up for individual coverage (most likely subsidized by the employer as well as the U.S. government) through Obamacare.

So to write that you will lose your doctor under Obamacare is a lie. Shame on you, U-T. — Dan Oakland, Rancho Bernardo

If the U-T editorial board, Roger Hedgecock (“This is going to hurt,” Opinion, May 5) and those Republicans who oppose Obamacare would put even half the effort into helping the program be successful as they do into tearing it down and criticizing it, we would see Obamacare succeed. Instead, because it was President Obama’s idea, they find every fault, every problem, and every reason why it will not work.

Folks, why can’t we pull together to make Obamacare work? If it has flaws, let us look for solutions to improve it, not just be negative and say it can’t be done.

As a teacher, I concentrated on my students’ good points and helped them correct their errors. I did not harp on their mistakes or complain that they would never make it. What kind of teacher/leader does that? Apparently those who oppose Obama seem to see the glass half-empty and won’t do anything to help fill up that glass! — Yolanda Emery, La Mesa

For the first time in first-world-country history, the undisputed leader, the United States — for those of you who might not follow these things — is the last of these countries to provide access to health care for all American citizens, and we did it without nationalizing the health industry or creating a huge bureaucracy to manage it. What’s crazy are those fellow Republicans of mine who focus on killing Obamacare now (by repealing it) instead of taking charge of its evolution to ensure portions of the act that don’t make sense are changed on an ongoing basis as American’s needs for health coverage changes over time.

Returning to a path where 42 million Americans do not have access to health care, the enormous cost created by such a large population utilizing emergency rooms as their primary care provider in addition to ER’s not being able to satisfy their own primary mission — emergency medicine — are key issues the Affordable Care Act fixes. Without the Affordable Care Act, health insurance providers continue to refuse coverage for those with prior conditions. It’s a slippery slope that can soon lead to utilizing output of DNA testing and probability of future illnesses (especially big-cost items) to exclude their coverage from individual health policies.

Without the Affordable Care Act, there is nothing protecting Americans from these profit-based business decisions used to restrict provision of health coverage. That is not the type of health insurance provisioning that makes sense for this Republican, or is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States. — Fred Janczyn, La Mesa